New planet discovered 13 times larger than Jupiter
American media has just reported that astronomers have discovered a planet with a mass 13 times larger than Jupiter - the largest and heaviest planet in the Solar System.
(Source: nasa.gov)
Observing through the Japanese "Subaru" telescope located on the top of Mauna-Kea mountain in the Hawaiian archipelago (USA), scientists from the Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics in Munich (Germany) took a picture of a gas giant planet orbiting the star Kappa Andromeda. Kappa Andromeda is a star 170 light years away from Earth, with a mass 2.5 times greater than the Sun.
The star is considered relatively "young" - only 30 million years old, while the age of the Sun is 5 billion years.
The discovery of the planet sheds light on the process of planet formation, scientists say. Scientists have previously suspected that planets could form from the protoplanetary disks of massive stars, such as Kappa Andromeda.
To date, scientists have discovered more than 800 planets outside our solar system. However, they have only been able to photograph a handful of them.
The results of this research will be published in the upcoming issue of the international scientific journal "Astrophysical Journal".
According to (TTXVN) – VT
